Sugar-loading at school recess

No matter where your child goes to public school these days, there are all kinds of restrictions about what they can eat during the day.
Typically, students can not bring their own canned or bottled beverages. But they can bring their own sandwiches or packed lunches. They cannot buy bottled water in the lunch room. If they are thirsty, they must sip from the school fountain before they sit down with their peers.
Classic lunch favorites, such as green beans dripping in bacon fat, or nachos with generous helpings of cheese and sour cream disappeared from school lunches years ago. Tacos and burgers are now made according to strict dietary guidelines - both are dry and crumbly as if our school children were already diagnosed as cardiac patients.
Last time I taught in New Orleans, fresh vegetables were not served to students. One advantage of teaching in rural schools is that we usually have real vegetables on our menu every day. But, according to new guidelines, fresh salads will typically consist of a few lettuce leaves and a slice of tomato. A fruit serving typically consists of a condiment cup filled with a few slices of orange or apple.
I haven’t seen bacon bits in my school lunch vegetables in a decade. Last year, sugar content in flavored milk and juice was reduced so much, I wondered if I should bring my own sweetener to the table.
Federal USDA lunch guidelines suggest lunch chicken, beef, pork, and shrimp portions be reduced to one ounce servings - another two- or three-bite portion.
Pasta and bread portions were reduced so much that adults and kids alike question whether they are getting a healthy lunch or a quick snack in the cafeteria, because they are still hungry after eating their stingy Weight Watchers portions.
Desserts have become a thing of the past. Once in a while graham crackers or a ginger snap cookie will appear at the end of the food line, right before we charge our bird food lunches to our school lunch accounts. But, for the most part, fruit doubles as a dessert.
It is quite an understatement to say that school lunches have changed drastically these past few years.
At afternoon recess, students stand in long lines to buy candy, sugar sodas, and other junk food, because they are still feeling the pangs of hunger.
Most public schools benefit from this irony, because recess junk food sales produce huge profits for cash-strapped school budgets.
If America is real in its quest to reduce medical costs by reducing childhood obesity, I don’t think it will ever be enough to impose starvation diets in the lunch room.
A better option would be to provide enough protein, complex starch, and vegetables in our school lunches to fill our kids’ tummies.
Children shouldn’t have to buy cola and sugary snacks in order to fix wiring or repair buildings. Because they will eventually pay a huge personal price when their diets result in diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. Of course, we will pay that price, too, in skyrocketing medical and disability costs.
We may need to look beyond the lunch room to the recess sugar fix in order to cure what ails many of our kids: their access to junk food that calms their food cravings but does nothing to build healthy bodies or strong minds.
How does that saying go, “An ounce of prevention is worth of pound of cure?” When it comes to childhood obesity, we may need to look beyond the lunch room to the recess candy stand to get to the heart of prevention.